Re: [aspell-devel] Language Info Needed for Aspell

[Remi Vanicat]

Kevin Atkinson <address@hidden> writes:

> [Please distribute this document as widely as possible.]
>
> GNU Aspell 0.60 should be able to support most of the Word Languages.
> This includes languages languages written in Arabic and other scripts
> not well supported by an existing 8-bit character set.  Eventually
> Aspell should be able to support any current language not based on the
> Chinese writing system.
>
> GNU Aspell is a spell checker designed to eventually replace Ispell.
> Its main feature is that it does a much better job of coming up with
> possible suggestions than just about any other spell checker out there
> for the English language, including Ispell and Microsoft Word.
> However, starting with Aspell 0.60 is should also be the only Free (as
> in Freedom) that can support most languages not written in the Latin or
> Cyrillic scripts.

I have some remark/question regarding French and in particular the
French dictionary I've made :

[...]


> Languages Written in Multiple Scripts
> =====================================
>
> Aspell should be able to check text written in the same language, but in
> multiple scripts, with some work.  If the number of unique symbols in
> both scripts is less than 220 than a special character set can be used
> to allow both scripts to be encoding in the same dictionary.  However
> this may not be the most efficient solution.  An alternate solution is
> to store each script in its own dictionary and allow Aspell to chose
> the correct dictionary based on which script the given word is written
> in.  Aspell currently does not support this mode of spell checking
> however it is something that I hope to eventually support.
>

[...]


> German Sharp S
> ==============
>
> The German Sharp S or Eszett does not have an uppercase equivalent.
> Instead when `ß' is converted to `SS'.  The conversion of `ß' to `SS'
> requires a special rule, and increases the length of a word, thus
> disallowing inplace case conversion.  Furthermore, my general rule of
> converting all words to lowercase before looking them up in the
> dictionary won't work because the conversion of `SS' to lowercase is
> ambiguous; it can be `ss' or `ß'.  I do plan on dealing with this
> eventually, however.


My remark is somewhat related with these two problem. The French
language is generally represented using latin-1 or latin-9. All letter
used in French have the same representation in both language but the
ligature oe. the oe ligature does not exist in latin-1 but does in
latin-9. When using latin-1, a word that should use the oe ligature
use instead simply oe (that is two letter ASCII in place of one non
ASCII). I would like to support both easily in my dictionary, but I
would also like that when using latin-9 word without the ligature are
rejected. Is there a solution ?



-- 
Rémi Vanicat